


Portal: Yes, Sir

by iammemyself



Category: Portal (Video Game)
Genre: F/M, Gen, caveline
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2015-08-29
Updated: 2015-08-29
Packaged: 2018-04-17 20:15:07
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 698
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/4679885
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/iammemyself/pseuds/iammemyself
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>He had become far more than simply her boss.</p>
            </blockquote>





	Portal: Yes, Sir

**Portal: Yes, Sir**

**Indiana**

**Characters: Caroline, Cave Johnson**

**Synopsis: He had become far more than simply her boss.**

 

 

He had always depended on her.

She was his little angel, his golden girl, his island in a vast sea of indescribable ineptitude. He told her these things over morning coffee, during the breaks between afternoon meetings, as they parted ways in the parking lot under the darkening evening sky. She worked hard for him; as the years went by, she strived and searched and eventually struggled to continue to work out ways to impress him. When you have already achieved everything, what really is there left to do? But because she was so desperate to live up to what he told her she was, she fought to do more even as her abilities inevitably lessened.

She should have been suspicious, should have become suspicious at any time, but so focused was she on her self-assigned task that she wasn’t. She believed him when he said she was the best employee he’d ever had. When he said she was the best employee he would ever have. When he said she was the one employee he would never replace. He said all of those things and many, many more, and she believed every word of it. She was, after all, the only person he could depend on. The only person smart enough and resourceful enough and devoted enough to do what was best for Aperture, to raise it up when everyone else said it couldn’t be done.

So when the project began, she ignored the stabbing in her stomach that told her the world she’d wrapped herself in her whole life looked different to everyone else’s eyes. That told her she was now regarded by the other employees as someone to be pitied, rather than someone to be jealous of. That she had spent all this time unknowingly leading herself into something indescribably horrible, and now it was far too late to stop.

As she worked herself into numbness and the others worked the project into completion, he became increasingly ill. He no longer had the strength to speak the words she’d raised herself on. As he struggled to draw breath, so did she, for he now withheld her air.

She learned of his plans for her at last, though he did not tell her to her face, and upon obtaining this knowledge she raced back to his side. Her chest and throat and fists were tight as she finally questioned him, finally wanted to know if what she had to do was best, and all he had for her was a single nod. All her years of service, all the pieces of her soul she’d given over, every breath she’d ever taken he had claimed as his own, and now that he was unable to do it himself he was binding her to him always. Forever to give everything, as he had always hinted at, but neither of them had fully grasped until now.

She continued on, for that was all she knew how to do; she had no concept of anything else, not anymore. She was, now and literally forever, his faithful protege. She was numb on the outside and slowly deadening on the inside, each breath shallower than the last, but that had ceased to bother her a long time ago. It didn’t matter anymore. His dictation of her life did not end with his death; his ultimate control of her actions only intensified, and as she stared at her coffin with eyes that had never seen for themselves, she dully reflected that the tightness in her chest was irrelevant. He had told her that with his last words to her.

She was not allowed to breathe where she was going.

 

**Author’s note**

**So I was looking at some blogs and they were all like glorifying Caveline, which… is not something we should be glorifying**

**And I got really angry so I was like ‘Imma write a story that is just so brutal there’s no way you can ship it’**

**And I wrote this on my iPod on the bus and it took about thirty minutes, no editing.**


End file.
